Nil space

So Anenae is now a proud member of The Arrow Project, and as such, also a member of the Morsus Mihi alliance.


^ Over there. Click for an up to date influence map.

Been making myself comfortable in null sec and oh boy, this is one of the reasons to love EVE so much, everything feels so new and different all of the sudden. No Empire space creamy-ass conveniences, only the corp/alliance's own facilities to keep you safe, no CONCORD presence at all, big rats on stargates even, all kinds of stuff I haven't had the chance to get used to in highsec. Seemingly constant gatecamps. Pretty much every move counts during these unstable times, or you can kiss your ship and clone goodbye; seems that you gotta keep your eye on the intel channels all the time, or the next ship you see drops a bubble on you and soon the sky is full of fire, death and podgoo.



Speaking of podgoo, lost my second Hurricane, *dancing* Queen just the other day pretty much in that manner. Click for bigger - see that red in local? A few moments later it wasn't the only one, no sir. Stealthy bastards.

Can't wait to be part of some bigger fleet op soon.

Will goes OW!

I kicked up a blog for my upcoming webcomic/graphic novel, the Willow, that's been going on in my head for a looong time now. By this post I try to encourage/force myself to actually get it going after all these years of not getting it going. Wish me luck.

The Willow <-- see it right over there.

Also, check out mah twitter for random EVE-screenshots and other even more random things. Thought it'd be the place to get more of these little shots I keep taking out to the public without making whole blog posts about them.

Also also, I added a donate button over there to the right :D!
Pretty please, with sugar on the top, I'm so very poor!

Hunting ghosts

(B&W here.)

Hey, I got a free month for EVE from the EVE buddy program \o/. Thanks, you know who you are.

I've slept a lot, though badly and still not enough. Been a few especially rough weeks for me.
I feel like I wanna draw, paint, model and animate my brains out, but I can't find the strength to do so. When I get home nowdays I just sleep, shoot zombies/mine ice and fall asleep again. Then it's off to school again.

Guess this modeling fever has something to do with Avatar too, finally did see it and even though the script stubbornly refused to surprise anyone in any way with shallow characters having locked alignments like straight out of a bad D&D game, the special effects were pretty damn neat. First 3D movie for me, even.
Also, this is probably a spoiler, but I lol'd how it was neatly implied that a betrayed tribe is won to your favor again just by having the coolest car/pterodactyl/something in the neighbourhood :D. That's how life works, kids.
Too bad love stories make me twitch still, they all remind me of all the wrong things. Still, I have to say that I liked watching the movie, no matter how strictly it was done by-the-book. A solid performance, if nothing else.

And all in all, I did manage to start a little project a few days ago:



Inspired by the Smokette being done by the dude(s) over l4dmods.com, I wanted to do something with the hunter. Work in progress, she still lacks rig, any kind of materials and I thought I'd do morphs for the face, even though the hunter in L4D doesn't have any facial animations. Just to refresh my memory on morphs. We'll see where this goes, at least I could refine a hi-poly huntress out of this, if not a model for the game.

Also, there's this thing about System Shock 2.

Should've turned left at Albuquerque

Some days ago, after getting the ~28,000,000.00 ISK for Hurricane battlecruiser, I got gateganked randomly at Tama while passing through. I got to sit/float in my new Hurricane for some hours only. They even podded me - my first time, that - lost a bunch of implants there, a fistful of millions to the solar winds. Goddamn, if you ever run into people from Involuntary Confinement, do steal their underwear.



Yes, I realized afterwards that the system I got killed in was indeed the very same that Hitler "got podded every time" :D. (The youtube-video in my previous entry.) I should've remembered just why it sounded familiar, before jumping into 0.3.



But hey, at least these are pretty sweet.

--
Also haha, I just noted that I've been receiving some traffic from Rule34 website. Okay, after pondering about it for a while I guessed it; seems that my female Smoker and Hunter & Zoey have somehow found their way up there -- and directed from there, I found out about this little project :D. Awesome.

Icy business

Anenae trying her hands on used ship sales. Surely she's better at selling refined ore, but you gotta try different things once in a while.
I'm glad, finally some artsy stuff around here, hopefully I'll be pushing out some more EVE related art soon.
Her suit is just something whipped from my head, at least below the official chestplate-thingy. I dunno, just something that comes off quickly when entering the pod and something that looks distantly like ah-ever-so-sexy overalls :D.

Also, watched Starship Troopers once again a few days back after bumping on the soundtrack on Spotify. Made me wish Dust 514 would come out soon and come out successfully. Not that I'd be getting a console just to play Dust, but I'd be eager to contract some console-grunts to work for me on planets.

"The fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying."

Though *many fingers* probably needs to grow a bit still for that kind of business. And join some huge alliance, or something, to fight for sovereignty. And I'm still a bit unsure how that would work out.




Speaking of growing, we've recruited new members and done some general wrecking, this time in Amarr space. Still only drones, but a bit more dangerous kind this time. It's fun, though not that profitable.




Aaand speaking of profit, I also decided to take a shot at ice harvesting and hey, it seems pretty healthy for my wallet at first glance.
The ice fields seem to be relatively rare and as I finally found one, it looked even more peculiar; filled with CONCORD police. Well, no harm in extra security I guess. I spent some four million ISK on a nice pair of Ice Harvesters and went on breaking the ice, so to speak.


Everything seemed to work out peacefully until some miserable little bastard warped next to me and opened fire with a destroyer. Too bad for him it is still a high sec system and the ice field indeed is full of CONCORD to begin with, and I actually noticed his attempt at blasting me to bits only at the moment he was already a pretty ball of fire and twisted metal himself. He had some backup too, though his friend just floated near me with a lock-on, not doing a thing. Nice going there.
Of course, this has all to do with Hulkageddon going on at the moment. Drives all the lunatics out in the fields, damnit, I haven't seen this many pods and exploding ships during my entire time with EVE yet.


Also earlier, with our science team of one, we probed out a wormhole in one of the nearby solar systems, though as the bravest one of us ventured forth to recon with a small frigate, he soon noticed that there were apparently some heavy duty pvp-equipment waiting on the other side with scramblers and deathbeams. So we, on a second thought, decided it was a silly place and didn't go there.

And in case you're that kind of reader who doesn't constantly hover his/her mouse over the pictures; yes, do click them to see everything there is. The screenshots in this blog tend to be just small crops of the actual shots :).

Also, this.

EVEn further into the emptiness

Our corp is up, yay. We are *many fingers* and we like to *squeeze the juice*!



It was a long trip, but there's a nice spot at Uosusuokko system (aka Suokukko) - lots of asteroids around, the system's near 0.0 space but still secure enough, and even quite close to Jita, the biggest trade system in the known universe. So Many Fingers got a hangar from this little Caldari station, one with a nice view.





Also, got myself a destroyer just for shits and giggles before getting a more expensive cruiser. The targeting range is abysmal, but once I get close enough with all my seven little babies, they do unleash a satisfying hail of uranium upon the offenders. Very cheap and not that effective in the long run, but gets my point across with those I need to get up against -- been hunting mostly small time (pi)rat(e)s with it, nothing grand, I still consider myself more of a miner/trader. Though when I decide to buy that cruiser, there's gonna be a small podgoobath just to get that out of my mind. Even carebears need to get loose sometimes.


Mining is getting more organized, bought a few secure containers as we got tired of the goddamn can flippers. Also with the Strip miners it's such a *party* to clear almost whole fields of valuable ore in a, well, reasonable time span. The corp just needs more sec containers, way more. And bigger ships, I want my Hulk already! ..enjoying my ~200,000,000.00 isk price tag.

Guess that's pretty much it since the last entry, on the other side of life I' ve been giving myself to school; we're doing this huge project for Nelonen and it really is draining all my creativity and strength. But I'm gladly giving, since it's fun, I learn a lot while doing, and we have a great team to work with \o/. The stuff we're working on is going to air somewhere during the next year as Nelonen renews it's look. Guess we'll be up for the whole year or something, keep an eye on the early morning cartoons especially, and their announcements :). That's probably all I can say about that here.

Happy holidays everyone, see you in space :).

The ____ is a spy

Ooh aah, zombies soon (+ additional Valve Time). Left 4 Dead 2!

If you somehow missed it, preordering L4D2 had some interesting effects as revealed in these next few screenshots:

..just rawcking mah axe.


Getting there..


Yes. Bills hat for Team Fortress 2, yay.

--


The new, bluntly suggestive zombies. She looks like she's trying so hard! The L4D2 demo has been under some serious gaming for these few weeks, everything seems pretty much as hoped for; it still feels like home, but everything's more polished and just a bit different to feel fresh.

Hrrraah, can't wait for versus <3.




Not related. Really.

EVEnt horizon

Oh wow, now I've done it, I surrendered myself to EVE Online.

The funeral bells for my already dying spare time, finally I meet the legendary MMO that avoids all the godawful "kill hundred dire rats after you're done with these thousands of dire wolves" and "hey it's this exactly same old generic fantasy theme all over again" traps and delivers something even I get excited about. And if you know me, you know that I'm not that good in coming into full terms with MMO's. I've tried many, since the idea of a huge shared world is still very intriquing to me, but it's one month tops that I can keep that interest alive when the game usually does its best trying to bury any innovative ideas and just fit into some already invented simple mold. Could be longer than a month in rare cases, but then it's all about the friends there, not the game itself. I'm very excited to see what happens with EVE.




I mean, I just spent another evening mining asteroids and enjoyed every minute of it; they weren't lvl1 dire asteroids and they didn't attack me! Then there's the actually working economy that's hugely dependant on the players (not NPCs with infinite pockets ), everything feels like it's actually immersible for the player. I spent time browsing the Market to find a good system to sell my ore, travelled there to sell my goods, refined some of them and: PROFIT. Of course, this is way more profitable in a group.

Sure, I'm not talking about some 100% realistic space simulation, but it's not just "magic", it's based on the real world and science.



An example: you accidentally or just out of plain curiosity jump in a solar system too far from authorities, maybe even as far as the 0.0 space, the no mans land with no NPC police at all, only the player controlled mega corporations' own laws. You happen to get ambushed by some pirates with pumped up PVP ships -- your ship gets shot to pieces, gets looted, they even blow up your escape pod. Those bastards.
Better start hoping that you did remember to take that more expensive insurance to cover your lost ship and that you updated your clone back in your home system so the skills you learned are still in your newly activated vatgrown brain as well, as you set course for revenge. The insurace covers only your ship, all the stuff in the wreckage is lost in the hands of the outlaws. It might sound harsh at first, but it only teaches you to stop doing stupid shit and in the end you are only smarter and having more fun.



Also, the fact that there are no levels per se, is such a huge plus that I could kiss them just for not being there, the important factors are your learned skills and your wealth. And you set up these 24h learning queues that progress even when you're offline, another nice trick to avoid unnecessary grinding and to make the next day's login a even more pleasant one; "hey, I learned a bunch of neat stuff during the night". And no different servers or shards, only one big world!

EVE, even though it's a bit too early to tell, I might be in love with you.

(Hey guys, there's a free 14 day trial available if you're man enough. You can catch me online by the name Anenae, a Minmatar miner/something.)

Also, the classic. Not entirely true though, just keep in mind that there's less hand holding and a bit more stuff to learn in the beginning than in an average MMO, and the game isn't gonna tell you that "you're a [FIGHTER] so you must [FIGHT] with your [WEAPON]".

Hmm, I think I have to create an alt Amarr at some point even though they are religious fanatics. Just because of the name :D.

Zombies plz

Well then! Some of you have probably wondered why this took so damn long, I mean, it was bound to happen someday. Here it is now!


Also found this pic of Smoker-tan I drew about the same time I did Hunu-tan. She felt like she was missing something back then, maybe teh funnies, but after giving her colors last night I guess she's ready for the world. Bill, beware.


orz

BRÜTAL VICTORY

Aaarrh, Brütal Legend <3.

If you're any sort of metallist-kind of dude/dudette, I highly recommend you to find yourself a copy of this awesome piece of METAL. Like, right now.

I don't have a X360 myself, but we gathered to a more better equipped friend's place with few dudes to try it out and Ozzy on a bicycle, it payed out thousandfold. Haven't felt that much like home with a game since, well.. I don't know when. It's not that the gameplay itself is too fantastic or anything new, the metallic beauty of Brütal Legend lies in whole different, brütal spheres. It's fucking metal, dudes.

Been spending my time finding those oldies that play throughout the game from Spotify now, pretty awesome shit. I love finding old treasures that can still make me go "hell yeah!"

--
And on a completely unrelated note, this kinda cracked me up.
(aww man, they already removed all the comments complaining about zombies)

Encounter

Something little for those who enjoy these two insanely awesome AI's. Had to speedrun Portal once again to get the cobwebs out of my brain and this is the result. I have so much to do for school that I can't think straight.

SHODAN should be just a 2D image on the screen, but I felt like she needed some depth and perspective in addition to her charming manners. She's, err, using some mad parallax mapping, or something.

Perfectly normal maps

Click above, I broke my embed codes.

This about one second's spotlight for my leading actress Will came to be as a part of my slowly regenerating trust for my PC's current updated state of not constantly crashing and actually being able to run 3Ds max properly. I began studying Zbrush and learned how to bake normal maps out from it, something I'd wanted to learn for some time now. After all, the games nowdays are pretty dependent on normal mapping and it feels like one of those things that every modeler should be able to handle.


So Willow here is my little learning dummy, she suffers from many flaws since I haven't built her that properly from the start, more like applied all newfound knowledges on her as time has passed, so she isn't finished by all means; the skinning needs work (the sleeves for example), her shirt -arms mostly - is probably going to get new geometry altogether (once again), she has yet no facial rigging at all, only that constant ":[|"-look on her face, and so forth. The actual NM's show best for some few frames as the light hits her jeans.


Anyways, as I baked her those maps, I thought that what the hell, might as well see if I remember anything from those After Effects -classes too. So I changed the moving light that was originally there just to show the NM in different lighting into that little glowing whatever, built a scene for her over this old low-res forest painting I'd made ages ago and tried to put her in there at least somewhat decently. Lots of different layers of noise, color correction and blur occured.


Spent only one late night for this scene and didn't bother with too much detail, but this proved to be really useful for me as I went through the phases needed for getting stuff into proper polygons and out of 3Dmax into a moving picture.

Brontotype

What I've been doing the past four days? Playing Prototype, that's what.


I had no idea I'd get so deeply consumed -- exploring Manhattan, and the ridicilous feel of raw power just blew me away and glued me to my PC for every free moment I could spare. It probably will today also, as soon as I'm done with this entry.
Even though the story mode is completed, there's the free roam mode which lets you, well, freely roam through the island and complete little events to gain more exp.




Alex isn't as subtle in his gentle pushes as his look-alike Altaïr.


Or in his attacks.


Or in his feeding habits.


He just likes to slam his fists to the ground all day.


"Ugh..no more dude, I'm done drinking for tonight."

The fact that the slimy dude sitting there is called a Hunter and Alex looks like a Hunter from L4D with his hoodie, is such a huge little joy for me, a hunter hunting hunters. Heh :|.

Also this.